We have been receiving a lot of calls from our customers lately asking about Heartbleed. People are asking what it is, and how they can protect themselves. Below is a description of Heartbleed, and what you need to do to start regaining your internet security.

What steps should you take?

Heartbleed needs to be taken VERY seriously, and as a result the steps to start solidifying your internet security again are going to be cumbersome.

“Due of the complex nature of this vulnerability, changing your passwords before sites update their version of OpenSSL won’t fully protect you.

Here are some simple steps you can take as a precaution:

Change your passwords on any website that contains sensitive information about you. You should first confirm that the site does not contain the Heartbleed vulnerability by using this tool HERE.

Beware of phishing emails and type website addresses directly in your browser instead of clicking on a link through an email.

Monitor your bank and credit card accounts for unusual activity.

We recommend you only exchange personal or sensitive information such as your credit card number if the site is not affected by Heartbleed.” – Norton Antivirus

Read on to find out more on Heartbleed.

What is Heartbleed?

Heartbleed is a bug that was discovered with the way private information is encrypted over the internet. When you are accessing a website, your computer is communicating with it by both sending and receiving information back and forth. Majority of the time this is done through a security tool known as OpenSSL. Heartbleed is the name of the bug that has shown to be a flaw in the way this process works, and in turn made all of this information that has been sent between the internet and your computer visible and accessible to anyone who is looking for it.

What makes the Heartbleed Bug unique?

Most bugs come and go and are fixed by new versions. However this bug has left large amount of private keys and other secrets exposed to the Internet. Considering the long exposure, ease of exploitation and attacks leaving no trace this exposure should be taken seriously.

What type of people and websites are affected by Heartbleed?

Over 80% of all websites on the entire internet have been affected by this bug. The result leads to a terrifying number of people who have been affected or at least susceptible to it. Furthermore you might have client side software on your computer that could expose the data from your computer if you connect to compromised services. In fact, since over 90% of people on the internet have been vulnerable to it, Heartbleed is now known as the most catastrophic thing that has happened on the internet since it’s creation. To reiterate, banks, social media, news websites, blogs, e-mail, and websites with streaming content have all been affected thus making you the consumer vulnerable. Below is a very small list of some of the websites that have been affected.

A SMALL checklist from Mashable.com of some of the major sites affected by Heartbleed

With Google Glass coming out to the public today 4/15/14, the next question is naturally ” what’s next? ” Well, Google is way ahead of you on that one with contact lenses that could have the ability to be equipped with night vision, zoom capability, the ability to give vision to the blind, and help those with diabetes keep an eye on their blood. The initial point of this Google project is focused around the diabetes issue going on in the world. People with diabetes have to consistently monitor their blood glucose levels, and deal with sugar spikes and drops that can affect their body at any point throughout the day. These lenses have the ability to monitor blood glucose levels via tears through the eyes. While the concept for these came out back in January, there are new developments in the computer based contact lenses that show they can do much, much more.

Recent news shows that soon contact lenses will have the ability to zoom, which could lead to major assistance with the blind and for those of us who have regular vision… supervision. A lens being developed by Eric Tremblay and the people at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and at the University of California, San Diego is proving to have the ability of almost 3x what normal vision is capable of. Check out the full article HERE.

Not enough for you? How about night vision? Contact lenses using an incredibly strong version of carbon known as graphene is the underlying technology that researchers are trying to effectively combine with contact lenses. Although graphene absorbs less than 2.5% of the light that hits it (which isn’t nearly enough light to generate a usable infrared signal), when the graphene is combined with a thin layer of insulation the signal that researchers are aiming for was significantly increased. In fact, the signal was increased so much that they are able to see the full infrared spectrum thus giving the ability to create a night vision lens in the future. Not only is this going to give the wearer the ability to have night vision, but infrared devices can be used to see blood vessels, sketches under layers of paint (X-Ray vision anyone?), and even gas leaks.

Would you wear these? Let us know what you guys think by leaving a comment below!

The Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability is a complete nightmare. What’s even worse is how limited you are in protecting your information. Since most who are affected by the bug are what’s known as an “end user” (The person who actually uses a particular product.) The responsibility to fix this mammoth issue is the person who manages the web service or manages the back-end service that the web service uses. ( over 500,000 websites so far )

So what does all of this mean, and why is it so bad? First we need to start with explaining the importance of OpenSSL. OpenSSL is a enormous part of the internet that everyone uses. OpenSSLis essentially a form of encryption that encodes everything your computer is sending to a website, in turn the website receiving it has encryption keys to decode this information and translate it back into useful information. This information can be ANYTHING from Usernames and passwords, to social security numbers and credit cards. On a scale from 1 to 10, this is a 20 in the magnitude of bad things that can happen on the internet. Furthermore, this enormous security threat has been around since December 2011! That’s over 800 days of everything you have sent on the internet that has the potential to be stolen. One of the most terrifying parts about all of this is that this entire bug has an astronomical amount of potential points that it can spread to. Most of us use the same password or set of passwords for most everything we do, so if at some point over the existance of this bug your password was recorded, you will not only have to change the password on the site it was recorded on, but all other sites with the same password.

What you CAN do against Heartbleed:

Check out:

Mashable.com for a huge list of what has been affected and passwords you should change.

lastpass.com to manually search any websites that you want to check the vulnerability of

Like this:

Seagate just recently announced the release of their 6TB Hard Drive that will be an amazing addition to anyone who needs the capability to download countless amounts of media, or who wants a massive spot to backup anything and everything they do on their computer. The specs for the 6TB wonder is as follows;

7,200 rpm

128MB cache

Encryption option with secure instant erease

SAS 12Gbit/s interfaceFor the rest of the specs on this storage beast, check out the full story HERE.

Cellphone carriers will be a bit on edge for a while after finding out Google is planning to establish their own wireless service. Rumors speculate that Google has had several meetings with at least two of the major carriers – Sprint and Verizon. The talk revolved around Google having access to resell over their networks giving them a quick jump into the game. It’s finally happening, Google’s plans seem to all point towards total domination of all technological markets. read the full story HERE

Like this:

Tired of flipping over the USB plug 4 times before you actually manage to plug it in? Well the answer to this major pet peeve is coming in the form of a USB Type-C cable. The new version of USB will be 3.1 which is still similar to the size of USB 2.0. Since this new cable wont be backwards compatible, there will be a lot of compatible connectors and adapters will flood the market. A major benefit of this cable will be that the hardware manufacturers won’t have to worry much about having different USB ports on different devices, such as the Micro USB ports seen on smartphones. In turn the slimmer design will also encourage them to develop sleeker devices. Check out the full story HERE.

Microsoft has just announced that they will be releasing Cortana as their solution to Google and Siri’s voice search tool on their smart devices. She will be able to make phone calls, send text messages, take notes, give reminders, and even set alarms. Cortana will be able to work with many 3rd party apps to make phone navigation a breeze. Check out the full story from Engadget HERE.